The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

by David Ireland

  ‘Hey, Colonel! The Brown Snake!’ hissed the Black Snake, who despised the Brown Snake although he was his superior officer. The Colonel was miles away, head down, bent over the Unknown Industrial Prisoner. Easy meat.

  ‘Take him out and shoot him!’ murmured the Colonel, just loud enough for the Brown Snake to hear, which was what the Black Snake wanted.

  Just then the tea-lady, dithering behind the urn, shot a gigantic fairy. The Brown Snake stood stock still, the Black Snake looked directly behind him at the poor soul without turning his head—he had Picasso eyes, on stalks, nothing was safe from his eyes—the Garfish ricked his neck looking over the partition that protected him from his subordinates, Pork Chop clattered the space bar on her machine aimlessly, waiting for someone else to laugh.

  The Mountain Cat broke the tension. She gathered her considerable bulk together and leaped for the door, but just as she got it open she started to release the choked laughter that was pressuring up her vast interior and screamed all the way over the courtyard to the Ladies’ Rest.

  ‘That was a bit titter,’ observed the Prohibited Import in his penetrating Scots voice. The room roared.

  DOWNFALL OF EMPIRES The Brown Snake got his laughter under control quickly and by the time the others stopped, he appeared never to have been laughing. He was Puroil Industrial Relations Officer, and had a duty to the company to see nothing funny during working hours.

  ‘Who paid 1554 last week?’ he asked, knowing this number was in the Colonel’s section.

  ‘The Colonel,’ said the Black Snake promptly. The Colonel braced himself and put the Unknown Industrial Prisoner aside.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do!’ he announced loudly. He always said this when he had to think about something. It was his way of gaining time. Then he decided to duck. ‘What did he claim on his card?’

  ‘Item 11,’ supplied the Brown Snake. The man waiting patiently for attention got to his feet, the better to hear them. He knew that number.

  ‘Not on the list,’ said the Colonel smugly. ‘We don’t pay ’em if it’s not on the list. Gotta be on the list!’ He waved a list of special claim rates which had lain idle on the desk while he fiddled.

  ‘How does it get on the list?’ interrupted the man waiting for attention. The Colonel did not readily talk to the crap—workers without white shirts—but he welcomed a diversion. His booming parade voice filled the office. He had been a good wartime officer; it was peace put the mockers on him.

  ‘I’ll tell you how! This—this sort of complaint’—waving at the time card in the Brown Snake’s hand—‘happens enough times and they’—he meant the overalled crap—‘make a squeal and see a delegate and he sees the Industrial Relations Officer and he sees the Accounting and Office Procedure man and the head Union man sees the management and the management sees the men and while this is happening the men threaten to strike and the company threaten to go to court over illegal stoppages. Every stoppage is illegal. And they face up and threaten some more, then the management might grant the new rate.’

  ‘What happens in the eighteen months the men do the special job and don’t get the special rate while they’re waiting for all this to happen?’ asked the man waiting patiently for attention.

  ‘Put that down to experience!’ He turned away. They all turned away.

  SUDDENLY ‘What’s that man doing there?’ asked the Brown Snake loudly. He meant the man waiting patiently for attention. His question did not register properly, as he knew it wouldn’t, but it served to get the attention of the whole office, including the Garfish, who stood up. The Brown Snake had seen the Whispering Baritone approaching—the head of Administration—and timed the repetition of his question to coincide with the Whispering Baritone’s entry. The Baritone was uncommitted in the green and orange war and might be influenced against the Garfish.

  ‘Why hasn’t that man received any attention after all this time?’

  The man waiting patiently for attention got up suddenly just as the Whispering Baritone came up to him. The Baritone reared back. Sudden movements of prisoners often panicked executives. The days were gone when prisoners cowered into corners at their approach. And the Whispering Baritone himself was a prisoner only a few grades higher than the man beside him. Not just a trusty or guard, but lieutenant to the camp commandant, no less.

  The man who had waited patiently for attention now allowed himself to think of the reason he had presented himself there and in a moment was raging.

  ‘We were told by the Good Shepherd that Item 11 was twenty cents and I’ve been claiming sixteen hours a week of item 11 for sixteen weeks now and where is it? It’s no use telling me it’s not on your list! When we’re told by management down there that we get this money then we expect management up here to know about it and pay it!’ He beat his breast. ‘We’re not the communicating links between departments in this detention centre, it’s not up to us to be on your hammer reminding you all the time: you should pay the right money off your own bat. So where’s my twenty cents an hour?’

  The Garfish struggled to the counter separating the man from the rest of the office.

  ‘Is that all you’re here for? Twenty cents? You’ve been here since 7.30!’

  ‘I’ve waited on that seat for hours for someone to come up to me and say What do you want?’ thundered the man with dignity, ‘But everyone passed by on the other side.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you knock on the counter for attention?’ shrieked the Garfish.

  ‘Why should I? You mob know I don’t work in this office. If I’m here I must want something. Why don’t you come and ask me? Why rely on me to push in and get attention? I don’t care if I wait. Something doesn’t get done down on the plant, that’s all. Or don’t you care about that?’

  ‘Well, that’s Operations Division,’ said the Black Snake and the room murmured approval. ‘It won’t show up in our figures. They’ll have to look after themselves. We’ve got our own work to do here in Admin.’, cunningly including the Whispering Baritone in the argument. ‘If you want something, just get somebody’s attention in the usual way.’

  ‘How, by throwing a fit or smashing your windows or sticking up a Puroil 1852 poster?’ barked the man. ‘I came here for my money!’

  ‘We’ll have a look into the matter and if it’s OK we’ll pay you next week,’ said the Garfish.

  ‘You’ll pay me now! I’m staying here till I get my twenty cents!’ said the man very loudly.

  The Garfish stuck his hand in his pants pocket and pulled out a twenty cent piece. Flipping it on the counter he sneered, ‘Here’s your twenty cents! Take it!’

  The coin slid along the counter near the man’s hand.

  ‘It should be paid in the proper way, through the payroll.’

  ‘It’s money, isn’t it? Isn’t that all you want?’ He turned to the Whispering Baritone, without caution. ‘All they ever think about is money. Money rules their lives. Don’t know the meaning of gratitude. Where could you get a better employer than Puroil? They don’t know when they’re well off. They’d never get conditions like this anywhere else!’

  ‘Neither would you,’ said the Whispering Baritone, who had a lisp and avoided talk as much as possible. Wary of the latest Luxaflex manoeuvres. He picked at his finger ends, flaking. The Garfish blinked, swallowed, shut up. The man picked up the twenty cents, held it high, turned it over and flung it to the farthest corner of the room. It tumbled off the brick wall and fell to the floor. Everyone looked round, anxious that it shouldn’t be lost.

  ‘I’ll have my money in the proper way. I’ve claimed it on time cards for sixteen weeks. And when I say twenty cents I mean twenty cents an hour for sixteen hours a week for sixteen weeks. And it better be in my pay this week!’

  ‘Why do you come here smelling this way?’ demanded the Whispering Baritone.

  ‘Because to make your rotten gasoline I have to get soaked in stuff you shiny-arses would run a mile from. Everyone down there has to put u
p with the same stink.’

  ‘Ridiculous. We don’t have it here in Admin. You people are always making out you’re hardly done by.’

  They were convinced he was lying, so he walked out under the large safety graph on display to all who came in the works. TOTAL DISABLING INJURIES FOR THE WEEK. He took from his pocket a Puroil 1852 poster, licked the gum on the back and pasted it to the door behind under the pretext of bending to tie a bootlace.

  Far Away Places was moderately happy. If he took knocks and insults from his fellows and injustice from Puroil, he was determined to cause a little commotion where he could. He would never mention his broken lenses, so he’d always have something against the company. There was no one person to hate, just the vast vague company. It made a big target. He walked slowly back to the plant, his left hand touching himself, his right playing with the trumpet mouthpiece. His wheel spanner, held in a low slit pocket, slapped against his right thigh. He swaggered like a movie cowboy. Nothing was as satisfying as revenge.

  3

  THE HOME BEAUTIFUL

  ONE GOOD TURN The Great White Father scrounged a collection of beds and lounge chairs, strips of carpet, kitchen tables, steel sinks, plumbing connections. A chain of men carted these things from the stone slabs at the river bank along the covered trail to the clearing. Painters were at work on the outside of the buildings, painting so that not even from the air could the Home Beautiful be discovered. Places had to be marked on the floors for the overflow from the old furniture when the Home Beautiful was crowded; that would not be necessary now. The Great White Father impressed on them that those who were on duty must present themselves at regular times back at their plants. Those who were really busy on the plant were not to leave until things were slack again.

  One Eye was one of the helpers. He’d been in for eight years and wanted to get out. This was unusual. Mostly young ones wanted to get out. However much they hated it, the older ones, over thirty, wanted to stay on, hoping that by the time they were sixty and retired from Puroil the means test might be abolished, the retiring age lowered and they would be able to collect the old age pension as well as the Puroil pension. All their lives they had paid for their pensions in the Social Services segment of their pay-as-you-earn income tax, but any income after retirement, over a certain amount, such as a pension from their employers, would disqualify them from the pension they had paid for.

  One Eye had his reasons. He was going into business and needed his proportion of eight years’ long service leave as well as his pension fund money, to finance him. But he could only get his long service leave proportion if he could get a dismissal or a doctor’s certificate that he was unfit to work any longer. Since he could both stand upright and breathe, he knew Doctor Death would never give him a certificate, so somehow he had to get a dismissal, but it must not be for misconduct. According to mysterious laws to which he had no access, misconduct disqualified him from the long service proportion. Nor could he get it if he resigned. One Eye had tried being found sleeping on the job, but the foreman who found him wouldn’t identify himself and kept a torch on him while he gave him a little lecture.

  ‘This shift is never all down. We have a reputation, so get on your feet. Everyone else is missing, someone has to be up.’

  One Eye got back to the river bank in time to meet the Volga Boatman and buy a few cans. This was not allowed usually, but One Eye had done a good job, so Volga gave him a ration. Even here One Eye missed his aim, for when he took the cans back to the plant to drink them where he would be found, the Beautiful Twinkling Star, who wouldn’t drink on the job, hid his empty cans and stood guard over him while he drank so that he wouldn’t be discovered.

  One Eye, rabid, quicktempered football supporter, was so infuriated by this goodness of heart that he planted the empties in the Beautiful Twinkling Star’s locker.

  LUST FOR COMFORT The Great White Father slept while they worked. When he showed signs of stirring, the Humdinger went over and held two fingers under his nose.

  ‘Sandpiper,’ said the great man, waking up immediately. He had never been known to make a mistake. The Two Pot Screamer got up from a corner of the drink hut and in a voice moist with warm emotion and cold pilsener, said,

  ‘This new era of comfort and escape and sexual freedom has meant a lot to me and my mates. I move a vote of thanks to the Great White Father and each and every one that helped him in this magnificent new conception.’

  ‘No conceptions, Two Pot,’ murmured the Great White Father.

  ‘Magnificent new erections, then.’ There was no dissent. ‘Only a short while ago a man was reduced to disgraceful attempts to get a bit of snooey. The Lady of the Lake—up there living in a shack near the tip—she was down at Mack the Knife’s and when I come in looking a bit lean and hungry and under-privileged, what does Mack do but pretend to the Lady of the Lake that I been in boob two years and in great need. “Will you fix him up?” he says. “Sure,” she says. And she lays down on the floor and her not a day under 65. Well I ask you. “While you jokers are looking?” I say. So there you are. All that’s changed now. I know we’re not British or European—we’re no one, just whites marooned in the East by history—but we have the Home Beautiful, plenty of beer and a fine bunch of girls and all I hope is the British mob doesn’t tear down this fine patch of mangroves and make us move elsewhere for escape from our industrial prison.’

  There was moderate applause; most of them suspected the Screamer of sitting there quiet all the time, thinking it up. The reference to the British mob—another overseas-owned patch of Australia, just as their refinery acres were European-owned—didn’t go over their heads. They took it as quite the natural thing that this patch belonged to Britain, that to France, another to America and so on from one valuable patch of Australia to the next. Yet if you referred to them as natives of an underdeveloped colony with not enough guts to toss the foreigners out as the Indonesians did, they’d look at you.

  The Great White Father revived, unfolded himself to his full height, and got into top gear.

  ‘My friends! We now have the blessings of electric light. Put forth the right hand of fellowship and flip the switch, Volga!’

  Light smothered them.

  ‘I am a light in the mangroves. Whoever believes in electricity will never fear darkness. We took the leads under the river, so take care you don’t displace any stones on the banks. The stone you displace may darken this place.’

  There was clapping of hands on the timber table and ceremonial lifting of cans.

  ‘Another important project is also under way. When winter comes, we’ll have no need to rely on our animal heat and the warmth of alcohol to keep out the cold. We have tapped the gasoil line. Our modest offtake will never be noticed. The lines won’t be all connected till winter, the heater is here already. Don’t forget, if you have any suggestions for our comfort, pin them on the new notice board.’

  ‘I thought I recognized it.’

  ‘They don’t need another safety notice board near the office block. There’s two dozen already.’

  AND INTO THE TREES YOU CAN BE SURE OF PUROIL was the advertising slogan stencilled on the four-gallon drum holding up one corner of the bed on which the Sandpiper performed her indoor duties. Many wits made reference to this slogan when they boarded the bed. But the Sandpiper enticed her men or compelled them, depending on the strength of their characters, out into the clay paddocks beyond the mangroves, sometimes in among the tangle of mangroves, balanced in the forks of trees, playing ape.

  The Two Pot Screamer had had his two pots and sank a third before his half-hour with the Sandpiper.

  ‘We’ve never had it so good’ he remarked to the Sandpiper, sprawled on the bed like a mongrel dog. As he prepared himself, he tried to get the Sandpiper to talk. Some small prideful weakness in him, left over from a life of defeats, resented her professional indifference. All the jokes he’d ever made about his most prized possession and about the action that gave him his
one spiritual consolation, where were they now? Coition was the only bit of heaven he had ever tasted, unless you count the oblivion of alcohol. He had a bad start in life and could never forget it.

  ‘Wish we had beds like this on night shift up at the plant. Rags has a dunlopillo for the concrete. Blue Hills has bags; he puts his feet in one and the rest on him and underneath.’

  ‘Get a move on,’ exhorted the Sandpiper. ‘You’ve only got half an hour. The Sumpsucker’s next.’

  ‘You can take him in your stride, can’t you?’

  ‘I’ll handle him.’ The Sump would recount endlessly his previous adventures, the odd demands he made on his widows, his victories over stubborn housewives. Physically he was amazing, though. Soon as his pants were off, up it came.

  ‘Do we have to go outside in the bush?’ he asked.

  ‘Suit yourself. It’s your dough.’

  ‘You won’t go dead on me?’ plaintively. He didn’t really care. Talking to a woman in a bedroom atmosphere was as much to him as the mechanics of it.

  ‘Who’s after Sumpy?’

  ‘Sea Shells. He just does the one thing.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sea Shells. Never on Sunday christened him. The missionary position always, and blows down your ear the whole time.’

  ‘What missionary position?’

  ‘Missionaries to the heathens taught converts there was only one Christian way to do it. The man on top. In some American states any other position is illegal.’

  Two Pot whipped out his pencil and made notes.

  From outside, the Sump sang ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee’ in a kidding tone of voice.

  ‘Shut up!’ called Two Pot. ‘Wait your turn!’

  ‘Muggy in here, isn’t it?’ mentioned the Sandpiper to hurry him up.

  ‘Let’s go, Sandy!’ insisted Two Pot desperately, grasping her broad hand and rushing her outside. Sumpsucker watched them trot into the mangroves, with a gently superior twist to his mouth and his tiny eyes bright—kept apart only by the top of his long pliable nose.